A letter from E. B. Wilson of Harvard to W. C. Mitchell of Columbia regarding mathematical economics at Harvard. Wilson appears to be not amused by what Schumpeter has done to the core theory course as formerly taught by Taussig. For some background see the proposal submitted by the economics department to establish courses in mathematical economics beginning 1933-34.
My favourite sentence: “The fact is we are lousy with mathematical economics so near as I can make out. I suppose Leontieff leans pretty strongly that way.”
_________________________
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH
55 SHATTUCK STREET
Boston, Massachusetts
3/27/36
DEPARTMENT OF VITAL STATISTICS
Edwin B. Wilson
Carl R. Doering
Professor Wesley C. Mitchell
161 West Twelfth Street,
New York, N.Y.
Dear Mitchell:
I understand Burbank plans for me to be giving next year the course on mathematical economics rather than the course on mathematical statistics which I am giving this year. This if Rollin Bennett were with us he could probably take my course.
There seems to be plenty of mathematical economics around Harvard and I judge that some people are pretty badly worried over the situation. Taussig’s great course on economic theory has now been taken over by Schumpeter and as far as I can find has been completely changed in that instead of covering a wide range of economic variables and points of view in oral discussion and trying to give the student some notion of how the theoretical economist may reason on the facts of a complicated world Schumpeter is practically giving mathematical economics. I don’t know that this is so but I am told that it is. The department is relying somewhat apparently on Chamberlin and Taylor to give general courses on economic theory without requiring much mathematics but the fact seems to be that the tradition that students should take the chief theory course which was Taussig’s and is now Schumpeter’s is so strong that practically nobody can escape Schumpeter’s course. I am told that he not only uses a great deal of mathematics, so that the course is really unintelligible to students who have not had at least two years of collegiate mathematics, but that more than this he marks the students not on how well they handle their economics in view of their total preparation but on their mathematical dexterity which makes it essential if a fellow is to have a high mark that he really be a pretty good mathematician. I have a notion that a good many members of the department are decidedly disturbed over the situation and are making some inquiries to find out whether it may not be possible for the department of mathematics to give a course more or less parallel to the one which it now gives which shall get the students further along in their mathematical notions in two years than is at present the case. You probably are aware that our layout in mathematics here is, like that elsewhere, designed primarily for students who are going to need a great deal of mathematical technique because of going into physics, or engineering, or astronomy, or mathematics itself, and isn’t ideally suited to those students who need a wide range of mathematical conceptions and a moderate range of technique and need to get it quickly as is best for students going into chemistry, physiology, economics, business, psychology, and so on. Now I happen to have repeatedly urged at Yale, at M.I.T., and informally here at Harvard where I am not technically connected with the department of mathematics, that our large institutions instead of giving one and the same course to all Freshmen and Sophomores in anything from 8 to 30 divisions should offer two parallel courses one of them directed to the students who needs to acquire a very considerable mathematical technique and covering topics selected with reference to the needs of such a person whereas the other should be differently conceived. It is a fact that an engineer with his courses on statics including strength of materials needs a pretty thorough grounding in trigonometric analysis. It is also important in the study of alternating current machinery. He may also need a considerable amount of analytical geometry if he is to be at home with ellipsoids of inertia and with stress and strain relations in the theory of materials. He must have considerable familiarity with the integration of differential equations. He really needs two and a half years of continuous and hard mathematics. Now for the other people whom I mentioned trigonometry is a matter that can be covered in very few exercises. They don’t have to do surveying, they don’t have to solve triangles, they don’t have to do analytical statics. On the other hand they do need rather more algebra, including choice and chance, for which there is no special necessity on the part of the engineer or physicist, at any rate at an early stage and they do need to get through with their mathematics say in a year and a half instead of two, and a half years. It is all perfectly simple to do in all institutions large enough so that there is no additional cost in running two parallel courses instead of a single course but I don’t know of any institution that does it. If I were arranging the courses on mathematics for the Freshman and Sophomore years in our major institutions there would be much greater variety in the offering, but this is beside the point. The fact is we are lousy with mathematical economics so near as I can make out. I suppose Leontieff leans pretty strongly that way.
I am sorry you have so much administrative work in the National Bureau. I wish you could be let alone to do your research. For that matter I wish I could. I am in too many things and this job for the National Resources Committee has been a great burden to me this year. Then Gay resigned from the Executive Committee on the Tercentenary and I was put in his place. The president has put me on his project committee to represent sociology as near as I can make out. My time has been dissipated. Some of the things that I was anxious to do when I gave up the presidency of the SSRC I have done but there still remain to be done a great many of those things which I had every reason to believe would have been finished by this time. In the meantime I suppose I have done a few other odds and ends that weren’t on my program because my position here is essentially a consulting position and I have to take in and think about problems which have been initiated by other persons but which can’t be wound up by them because they haven’t adequate knowledge of statistical methods and I fear even not of logical methods.
I wish the SSRC this summer would go up to the South Shore or the North Shore so that their members would be near at hand for the Tercentenary Conference of the social sciences. It would seem to me that the Symposium on Factors Affecting Human Behavior and that on the Relations of Authority to the Individual and that on Cultural Diffusion which occupy the 5 days from September 7th to September 11th inclusive would be right up the main track of the SSRC and that we would be likely to have more of the people here if the Council met up in this vicinity. I daresay that wherever it meets I shan’t have much time for it because of pressure of work on the small committee consisting of Shapley, Henderson, Nock and myself with Jerome Greene which is to take care of the Academic end of this large conference.
Yours very sincerely,
[signed: E. B. Wilson]
Source: Columbia University Libraries Manuscript Collections. Mitchell, W. C. Collection, Box 14 (Correspondence Ve—Z), Folder “Wilson, Edwin B., Boston, 27 March 1936, To Wesley C. Mitchell”.
